Donald Henry Rumsfeld was an American politician, government official and businessman who served as Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under Gerald Ford, and again from 2001 to 2006 under George W. Bush. He was both the youngest and the oldest secretary of defense. Additionally, Rumsfeld was a three-term U.S. Congressman from Illinois (1963–1969), director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1969–1970), counselor to the president (1969–1973), the U.S. Representative to NATO (1973–1974), and the White House Chief of Staff (1974–1975). Between his terms as secretary of defense, he served as the CEO and chairman of several companies.
Tommy Ray Franks is a retired general in the United States Army. His last army post was as the Commander of the United States Central Command, overseeing United States military operations in a 25-country region, including the Middle East. Franks succeeded General Anthony Zinni to this position on 6 July 2000 and served until his retirement on 7 July 2003.
Significant opposition to the Iraq War occurred worldwide, both before and during the initial 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, and throughout the subsequent occupation. People and groups opposing the war include the governments of many nations which did not take part in the invasion, and significant sections of the populace in those that did.
The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States foreign policy. It was established as a non-profit educational organization in 1997, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan. PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership." The organization stated that "American leadership is good both for America and for the world," and sought to build support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 days of major combat operations, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq. This early stage of the war formally ended on 1 May 2003 when U.S. President George W. Bush declared the "end of major combat operations", after which the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was established as the first of several successive transitional governments leading up to the first Iraqi parliamentary election in January 2005. U.S. military forces later remained in Iraq until the withdrawal in 2011.
The Battle of Baghdad, also known as the Fall of Baghdad, was a military invasion of Baghdad that took place in early April 2003, as part of the invasion of Iraq.
During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, sodomy, and the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs of the abuse by CBS News in April 2004. The incidents caused shock and outrage, receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
Operation Northern Delay occurred on 26 March 2003 as part of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It involved dropping paratroopers into Northern Iraq. It was the last large-scale combat parachute operation conducted by the U.S. military since Operation Just Cause.
The U.S. rationale for the Iraq War has faced heavy criticism from an array of popular and official sources both inside and outside the United States. Putting this controversy aside, both proponents and opponents of the invasion have also criticized the prosecution of the war effort along a number of lines. Most significantly, critics have assailed the U.S. and its allies for not devoting enough troops to the mission, not adequately planning for post-invasion Iraq, and for permitting and perpetrating widespread human rights abuses. As the war has progressed, critics have also railed against the high human and financial costs.
The Downing Street memo, sometimes described by critics of the Iraq War as the smoking gun memo, is the note of a 23 July 2002 secret meeting of senior British government, defence and intelligence figures discussing the build-up to the war, which included direct reference to classified United States policy of the time. The name refers to 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister.
The rationale for the Iraq War, both the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent hostilities, was controversial because the George W. Bush administration began actively pressing for military intervention in Iraq in late 2001. The primary rationalization for the Iraq War was articulated by a joint resolution of the United States Congress known as the Iraq Resolution.
David D. McKiernan is a retired United States Army four-star general who served in Afghanistan as Commander, International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). He served concurrently as Commander, United States Forces – Afghanistan (USFOR-A) from October 6, 2008, to June 15, 2009.
The Iraq War was a protracted armed conflict from 2003 to 2011 that began with the illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States–led coalition which overthrew the Iraq government under Saddam Hussein. The conflict continued for much of the next decade as an insurgency emerged to oppose the coalition forces and the post-invasion Iraqi government. An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis died in the first three to five years of conflict. US troops were officially withdrawn in 2011. The United States became re-involved in 2014 at the head of a new coalition; the insurgency and many dimensions of the armed conflict continue. The invasion occurred as part of the George W. Bush administration's War on Terror following the September 11 attacks despite no connection of the latter to Iraq.
Michael R. Gordon has been a national security correspondent for The Wall Street Journal since October 2017. Previously, he was a military and diplomacy correspondent for The New York Times for 32 years. During the first phase of the Iraq War, he was the only newspaper reporter embedded with the allied land command under General Tommy Franks, a position that "granted him unique access to cover the invasion strategy and its enactment". He and General Bernard E. Trainor have written three books together, including the best-selling Cobra II. As a journalist for The New York Times, he was the first to report Saddam Hussein's alleged nuclear weapons program in September 2002 with the article "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts."
Bernard E. Trainor was an American journalist and a United States Marine Corps lieutenant general. He served in the Marine Corps for 39 years in both staff and command capacities. After retiring from the Marine Corps, he began working as the chief military correspondent for The New York Times. He was subsequently a military analyst for NBC. With Michael Gordon, he was the author of three accounts of American wars in Iraq, The Generals War (1995); Cobra II (2006); and Endgame (2012).
State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (ISBN 0-7432-7223-4) is a book by Bob Woodward, originally due to be published October 2, 2006, that examines how the George W. Bush administration managed the Iraq War after the 2003 invasion. It follows Woodward's previous books on the Bush administration, Bush at War and Plan of Attack. Based on interviews with a number of people in the Bush administration, the book makes a number of allegations about the administration.
Douglas Abbott Macgregor is a U.S. Army Colonel (retired), government official, author, consultant, and television commentator.
Combined Joint Task Force 7 was the interim military formation that directed the U.S. effort in Iraq between June 2003 and May 2004. It replaced the Coalition Forces Land Component Command on 14 June 2003. CFLCC was the land forces component of United States Central Command that carried out the initial invasion of Iraq, was established by Commander, U.S. Army Forces Central Command, in 2002/3, to oversee two corps-sized organizations, I Marine Expeditionary Force and V Corps. These two corps-level formations carried out Operation Iraqi Freedom which began on 20 March 2003.
The lead-up to the Iraq War began with United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 and subsequent UN weapons inspectors inside Iraq. This period also saw low-level hostilities between Iraq and the United States-led coalition from 1991–2003.
Mark J. O'Neil is a retired United States Army major general who last served as the commander of U.S. Army Alaska. He previously served as the commanding officer of Delta Force from July 2, 2009 to August 2011. He has participated in numerous combat operations, such as; the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He assumed his final assignment on July 12, 2017, before retiring in 2019.
